


What are we?

by narath



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: DORKS being NERDS, F/M, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition - Trespasser DLC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2019-09-24
Packaged: 2020-10-27 12:53:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20760677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narath/pseuds/narath
Summary: a little quiet moment between dorks that love each other but refuse to acknowledge it





	What are we?

Zevran spared a glance towards her, half-hidden in the wetted shrubs of the Arlathan forest; the thick, wide and short jungle leaves that surrounded them for miles upon miles. She whittled a thumb-thick piece of wood down to oblivion, it seemed; the dust of its fibers flying everywhere. She was absentmindedly humming a strange song without any words; her voice drifted as peacefully as the porling river beside him, or the crackle of fire beside her. She hummed the notes audibly; falling into vibrational silence as her limitations grasped, too high, or too low.

It was a lullaby by elves, for sure, as her voice shifted and her staccato pronounced boldly, even quietly so. Zevran listened for a while with his eyes gently closed. His bare feet and calves were still submerged in the water of the trickling stream, the cold only serving to add to the gooseflesh presenting on his skin. It was not often that they would share a moment of peace; with the whole world crumbling around them most certainly not so, but he now relished the gentle tune of her voice during the still and silent night, and soon joined her with a humming sound of approval. He sang the low notes she flaked to hit, and met her eyes while doing so; smiling not only out of habit but absolute, genuine pleasure.

“Arrows?” Zevran asked when the song died out, his fingers twirling around a pebble he picked up from the river floor, eyebrow raised.

“No,” she said and put a strand of hair behind her ear looking up, shy. “Not arrows.”

“What then?” He threw and skipped the rock as best as he could downstream. It skipped twice. “You seem awfully angry with the twig, no?”

She feigned a frown. “I’m just.” Sansara switched to poking the dying embers of the campfire with the tip of her dagger. “I want to learn how to carve, or something.” She sighed. “This whole thing is taking too long.”

“What,” Zevran smiled. “Revolution?”

“Yeah, that.” She laughed lightly. “I guess. I don’t like the dark too much, and I want something to do. All I know is arrow tips.” She wiped the ash off the tip of her dagger and started shaving the already thin piece of wood with determination. It was silent for a long while. Zevran picked his teeth with a thin bone from the fennec they ate earlier and Sansara stubbornly drove her dagger through yielding wood. Cicadas sang for them, shrubs moved loudly in the distance.

“It’s a nice metaphor though, for what’s happening with Fen’harel, right? She tittered finally -and she did it only because she wanted to sleep. The only problem was that they had one tent to share, and she knew that now. It was too cold to sleep under the stars.

Zevran huffed, uncharacteristically bashful. “It’s an adventure, no?”

And then he huffed again after an eon of silence, exasperated, as she fixed the wolf pelt that made their bedding -pointedly with a wall between their spaces… of their shared tent, that they had to share, in the ass-end of nowhere, in the middle of this. She put an awful lot of effort into having equal shares of the tent, although she loved sleeping beneath the naked sky. It was… Yeah.

Wasn’t she supposed to be dalish?

Sansara settled after a while. She wouldn't admit to anything, not even to herself; how she felt him watching her as she twisted and bent to make their tent comfortable, or how she watched him now that she was done, with her mouth slightly agape, as he set up traps all around them; calculating every move anyone could ever pull. No.

It was all done now, her in the opening of the tent, eating, him by the dying embers of their fire, warming himself; the question looming between them so incredibly loud in the silence surrounding.

The sun had set fully now, only the moon kept company to the stars, shining sparsely through the branches of the jungle.

“I can show you?” Zevran said, a whisper almost too loud for the quiet by now.

Sansara drank the rest of her stew from the big bowl between her hands, her eyes open; considering him, and his offer. He picked up her whittled down needle-tip twig beside her and studied it.

“It’s not as lethal, I’m sure,” he chuckled, “but it’s something.”

“What something?” Sansara asked, wiping her chin clear of broth.

“A halla.”

“Which you haven’t even seen?”

Zevran laughed, feigning a wound on his chest, casually. “I have? By my mind’s eye, and through memory.” His index finger tapped a spot between his eyebrows, then his temple.

“Hmm.” She shot him a peculiar look. Then went to sit in front of him, their dying fire at her back. She dragged her sharpest dagger from its holster and handed it to him by the blade, as well as a unused log for their fire.  
She smiled a little then, too. “Show me?”


End file.
